A black guitar, its metallic finish dazzling and impossible to forget — one glance at the body was enough to burn the image into your mind: a skeleton drummer in a marching band, caught mid-flourish as if it might start moving at any moment.
"This is so cool! Kyoumoto, do you know who sent this guitar?!"
"Huh? A guitar? What guitar — oh, hasn't that always been here? I think it's Father's."
"..."
Yoshiiro Chiose knew perfectly well that no guitar had ever existed in this house. Her father didn't know the first thing about music theory, either.
To quote Holmes once more...
[Yes, I adjusted their perception. Only a minor tweak — it won't affect anyone's personality or subjective consciousness.]
[After all, I could hardly let word get out that my dear Host — a girl with absolutely nothing to her name — had suddenly come into possession of an enormously valuable guitar.]
[That would put my beloved Host in danger. So the System selected the safest, most reliable, most foolproof approach. I hope Host will forgive the imposition.]
"..."
Fine. No real harm done.
Yoshiiro Chiose ran her hands over the guitar, unable to put it down. It was leagues above the beaten-up junk she'd used back in the simulation.
Heavy metal meets punk — if she played rock with this thing, it would be absolutely, devastatingly cool.
Chiose sat there with the guitar in one arm and her little sister in the other. In that moment, she was the happiest woman in the entire world.
[Host should begin the next simulation as soon as possible. Every moment of delay is a wasted opportunity.]
Yeah, yeah, I know. Tomorrow night... or maybe the night after. We'll see.
There was still one last question Yoshiiro Chiose hadn't found an answer to.
She wanted to go looking for this world's Takamatsu Tomori — before the next simulation.
That stranger she had never met, yet felt closer to than almost anyone.
...
That night passed without incident. It was the most restful sleep Yoshiiro Chiose had gotten in a long time.
Perhaps it was the effect of her restored lifespan — she could feel vitality surging through her body in a way she hadn't in ages.
She woke early, tucked the blanket back around her little sister — kids really did sleep like rocks — pressed a soft kiss to her cheek, and headed out.
"Takamatsu Tomori... Takamatsu Tomori..."
She had to go find that idiot named Takamatsu Tomori.
If Toyokawa Sachiko existed in this world, then Takamatsu Tomori absolutely had to exist too.
"But where do I even start looking for Tomori?"
Chiose knew which kindergarten and high school Tomori had attended. She even knew her university and future workplace.
But plenty of that information applied to futures that hadn't happened yet — useless data points for a present that wasn't there.
"Still... I do remember where the Takamatsu apartment is. Unless they've moved, I'm confident I can find it."
She bought herself breakfast, thought about it, and bought a second portion — something Tomori liked to eat.
It left her already-thin wallet even more paper-thin, but she didn't care in the slightest.
She made her way along a path she had never walked before yet somehow knew by heart, rode the train four stops, walked through a scatter of falling cherry blossom petals counting them as she went, and finally arrived near Tsuki no Mori Girls' High School —
"Once I'm at Tsuki no Mori, I'm practically at the Takamatsu apartment."
Just a few more steps up, one turn around the corner, and she'd be there.
But Chiose's legs had turned to lead. She couldn't move another inch.
[Are you really going up there?]
If she climbed these steps — these steps that felt like fate itself — then what would that make this...
What would that make her?
What exactly was she to Tomori?
"Come to think of it... Takamatsu Tomori and I don't know each other at all."
In the truest sense of the word: strangers.
They didn't even know each other's names. To say nothing of... shared memories, or warmth, or any of that — all of it was fiction. None of it was real.
The reality was:
"The reality is that Yoshiiro Chiose and Takamatsu Tomori have absolutely nothing to do with each other. It's just that this pitiful Yoshiiro Chiose can't quite bring herself to treat the simulation like a simulation — and so she staged this ridiculous little farce this morning."
Chiose muttered to the empty air, as if she were saying it for the benefit of some passing bird.
"Honestly, even if I did see Takamatsu Tomori — what would I even say? 'Hi, nice to meet you, I'm the little sister you dropped down a stairwell'?"
"Or maybe: 'Hey, long time no see, I'm the colleague who got stabbed by that random spree killer'?"
Give me a break.
In the real world, the story lines of Takamatsu Tomori and Yoshiiro Chiose had never crossed. Not once.
So... don't go stirring up trouble, Chiose. Just go home.
She kept talking herself into turning back — but the path in front of her was so vivid, so achingly familiar. In every little patch of roadside grass, she could almost make out the shapes of two grey-haired little girls playing together.
Fragments of a beautiful past that had never actually existed.
"I'm leaving..."
A simulation is only a simulation.
A simulation is only a simulation. What happens inside it is nothing more than a made-up story.
Only through relentless self-hypnosis did Chiose finally manage to force herself to turn around.
"Haah..."
Train. Four stops. Downstairs of her building. Up the stairs. Unlock the door. Change clothes. By the time she got back, Haizuka Kyoumoto still hadn't woken up.
Thirty-some minutes away from home, all for a self-indulgent little moment of release — was that really all she'd gotten out of it?
"Mmm... Chiose?"
"Awake already, my little Kyoumoto?"
Yoshiiro Chiose held out the breakfast she had originally meant to give Takamatsu Tomori.
"They've got new items at the breakfast place outside, so I figured I'd grab some for you to try. Eat it while it's hot."
"Huh? Okay!"
"Brush your teeth and wash your face first, though. Come on, I'll help you. Off you go."
"Okay~"
...
Takamatsu Tomori had not dreamed last night.
"It's such a rare thing, sleeping that lightly — but..."
But sleeping too lightly only made the hollow feeling in her chest grow heavier.
Get some air, she decided.
She yanked open the heavy curtains and pushed the window wide, eyes closed, letting the morning breeze wash over her face.
"Mmm... so nice... mm... mm? Is that..."
Her pomegranate-red eyes snapped wide open — a violent tremor passing through them, like an earthquake had just split the ground beneath her gaze.
There, standing outside her building, wearing a wine-red beret and a pure white dress, was Yoshiiro Chiose.
She looked so beautiful.
Beautiful as ever.
Tomori had only ever glimpsed young Chiose and grown-up Chiose in dreams — but she recognized her in an instant. The girl standing below was Chiose as she was in her youth.
"Is that really Chiose?"
Really? It couldn't be... that was just an incredibly vivid dream, nothing more... it wasn't possible...
"Chi—!"
Ugh!
Takamatsu Tomori caught herself the moment she started to call out and pulled back immediately.
"That would be so rude... I don't know that person at all. Calling out to a stranger like that — she'd think I was some kind of creep."
Besides, there was no guarantee that girl was actually named Yoshiiro Chiose.
Maybe she just happened to look exactly like the girl from the dream. A complete stranger. A coincidence.
They said that strangers who appeared in dreams were usually people you'd caught a passing glance of during the day, their faces lodged in your memory without you even noticing.
So perhaps this "Yoshiiro Chiose" was nothing more than a figment of Takamatsu Tomori's own wishful imagination.
"And besides..."
Tomori's whole body was trembling, and she couldn't make it stop.
"If I met Chiose... would Chiose even be safe?"
Every single time something happened to Chiose, it was because of her — because of Takamatsu Tomori...
____
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